Can £7m dent £105bn cyber crime menace?

British business has questioned how a newly created £7m police unit will help tackle a global cyber crime industry estimated to be worth £105bn.

From spring 2009 the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), announced yesterday by the Home Office, will co-ordinate law enforcement of all online offences and lead national investigations into the most serious e-crime.

The Home Office admitted however that the unit will still not centrally collate all reports of e-crime from the country's 44 local forces, adding the PCeU will work with the National Policing Improvement Agency to identify how e-crime reports made to local forces are handled.

The unit will also train officers in local forces in dealing with high-tech crimes and co-ordinate "initiatives to crack down on online offences".

silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign is calling for a national UK cyber crime police unit.

The unit would provide leadership and expertise to co-ordinate investigations nationwide and collate reports from police forces across the country, as well as offering a central point of contact for reporting e-crime.

We want to hear your views about this campaign and your experiences of being a victim of cyber crime. Were you happy with the way your case was handled? Make your voice heard by leaving a Reader Comment below or emailing us in confidence at editorial@silicon.com.

The PCeU will focus heavily on online fraud, particularly on cases reported to the National Fraud Reporting Centre. The centre will offer a single contact centre for the public to report all frauds, including online, when it launches next year.

Business however remains sceptical about how far the PCeU will be able to stretch its £7m funding over three years.

David Roberts, chief executive of the Corporate IT Forum, which represents some of the largest corporate users of IT all with a turnover of more than £300m, expressed grave reservations about the funding.

He told silicon.com: "£7m over three years seems a very small sum for a very large problem.

"We doubt whether it will be enough to tackle an issue that the Home Office itself calls a 'global menace' - something our own members know all too well.

"The Police Central e-Crime Unit seems a good start but it must be the beginning of something much bigger and better."

Gareth Elliott, policy advisor with the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "It is a step in the right direction but £7m does not seem like very much compared to the cost of cyber crime."

Co-architect of the PCeU detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie admitted that industry backing and expertise will be critical if the unit, staffed mainly by Metropolitan Police Service computer crime specialists, is to succeed.

Speaking at an industry event organised by online payments company SecureTrading last week she said: "At the end of the day, we've got a handful of cops to deal with the high volume of frauds taking place.

"We can only do that with the co-operation of industry. We need to gather a huge amount of data."

Industry is keen to start working with the police to tackle a mounting menace, according to IT trade organisation Intellect, which believes business must play a key role in the unit.

Carla Baker, programme manager at Intellect, said: "The government has earmarked £7m and this figure should be kept under constant review and increased according to the changing circumstances. Intellect looks forward to working with all criminal justice agencies in the development and implementation of this new unit."

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said in a statement: "It is important that we stay one step ahead of criminals who increasingly use sophisticated computer networks and the internet to commit and facilitate crime."